Okay, so weird.
I had this whole idea, for months, to do a Substack. Substack is NEW, Substack is The Way, Substack is so official and real and like, legit.
Instead, I just randomly turned on my computer today, happened to look in the list of apps on my Google account, and lo and behold, right there alongside my Google Sheets and whatnot, was the Blogger symbol. I clicked on it.
Holy Mother of Christ on a cracker--it still had all 3 of my previous blogs on it! No searching for passwords, no Googling, just free and easy access to my previous writing life in about 3 clicks.
It was an actual miracle that just happened on my computer about 20 minutes ago. The world opened up.
I could just...start a new blog on Blogger? Like I've always done, like has always worked for me before?? I've been getting all of these inklings to "try something new," BUT THEN ALSO, "don't reinvent the wheel!" Which is a real head-scratcher-slash-mindfuck, because WTF? (This is me all day every day, but for real, what in the actual hell.)
Let me tell you, living a life of faith is not easy. If it were easy to trust the Inner Voice, they wouldn't build up structures and organizations to make living a "normal" life so much more appealing. And like, I'm a fan of that. I want life for all of us to be easy. Except I have tried to be normal for damn near my whole life, and after 4 decades and some change, I literally cannot. Like, I actually get karmically spanked if I do. The normal path is not an option for me. I have to be a rebel, even when it sucks.
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I just sat back down at my computer after leaving this post unfinished for over a week, and now I'm reading it back, simply horrified.
Getting back on the horse after not writing for SO long feels like...
Can I even do this anymore?
Was I ever any good at it?
Do I even want to? (YES, but in the moments around it, no way Josééééééééééé
mtf
COMMERCIAL BREAK: Dinah has just walked over my keyboard and typed her first Paw Post. Hereafter all posts made by cats will be trademarked as Paw Posts (tm).
CAT UPDATE: Dinah is now curled up next to my legs licking her butt. Ladies and gentleman, may I present--cats.
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Anyhow, what was I talking about? Oh yes, living a life of faith.
This was a concept I heard ad nauseum growing up in AWANA, but it always seemed so far away. People like me didn't live lives of faith. That was for missionaries and people with awe-inspiring testimonies of adversity. I couldn't fathom any of that at the time.
Honestly, a faith-led life seemed boring. I didn't have a passion for converting others to Christianity (eew, tacky), and I had no intention of giving up my dreams of wearing cool clothes and having a hot boyfriend/husband to cuddle with every night for the rest of my life. I was committed to my spirituality, but I didn't understand what it truly meant to trust the whispers of the Divine. That would come later.
If I didn't really understand what faith was, I certainly had no idea how to actually hear my quiet inner knowing or the voice of the Divine. And even if I did, how could I trust it? I'd had, "all our rightousnesses are as filthy rags," and, "the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked," hammered into my head since birth.
Thanks to that upbringing combined with my Highly Sensitive personality, which fawns and pleases others as a coping mechanism for discomfort, I have lived most of my life following what others say or think I should do. This strategy works great. I have the approval of my family or the boyfriend I'm wearing a mask for, and alllll is well in my life--until it isn't.
Inevitably, every single time, I explode in repressed Leah-ness, and blow up my life in order to escape from the prison I created by betraying myself. Then everyone is left shaking their damn heads ~again~ that Leah just can't keep it together.
You see, I have a lion inside of me. She is ~fiercely~ protective of my soul. This lion is a gift from the Divine--not a curse, a gift.
She wants me to march to the beat of my own drum. But after years of being told to shove my drum in a closet covered with blankets, it was really hard to hear. The Ego is much louder. It says shit like, shhhh, don't be you, watch your mouth, don't make any mistakes, you might get caught or punished. You have to get dead quiet to hear your drum, or at least I do. So I've been quiet. Listening. Developing a relationship with my lion to where I can hear the higher plan for my life, instead of the voices and opinions of those around me. You know, the people who will never understand.
That's all well and good, but what about when your still small voice, says, "quit your job," and, "don't settle," and, "think with your heart not your head?" This where faith comes in.
We live in a world where the mind is worshipped. It's the culturally accepted authority worth listening to. In fact, being spiritual is dumb--LOGIC is king. I learned this from dating atheist after atheist, as well as encountering many friends who felt along these lines. But weirdly enough, I also learned it in my family. I learned it in my church.
True faith is radical. It is counter-cultural. It goes against the status quo, not with it. Remember Noah and the Ark? He worked on that shit for what, 80 years? Everyone thought he was an idiot. Noah's tale is one of the all time best stories about faith. Our churches may have taught us that faith meant professing it to others, or being unafraid to engage in anti-social behaviors in the name of "Jesus," but that's not it. Faith is Noah feeling like God called him to build a big stupid ark, and doing it, even though nary a drop of rain threatened.
And in my case, this past year, faith meant quitting my job because my body was broken. It meant putting my dreams aside to care for my sick son. It means figuring out how to build this next phase of my life from my bed and from my couch, NOT doing the work that others say I should, but the work that fills my soul. The work that my inner lion has been urging me to do. I ran and ran and ran away from it for so long, but now the Universe has tied my hands behind my back, or rather, to my keyboard, and I must take my next leap of faith.
One of those leaps is this blog. I'm glad to be "back", whatever that means. I have been through so much in the last several years, and its time I shared some of my thoughts with y'all. I'm scared. But I'm here, trusting that this is the next right thing.
Maybe in 80 years it will rain?
* Fun fact The Head and the Heart is my all-time favorite band, although if you are one of my long-time followers you already knew that.
